Vixen by Jane Feather Read Free Book Online Page A

find a suitable husband,” she added reflectively, “one who won’t interfere too much. Eighty thousand pounds should count for something, and I’m quite pretty, I think.”
    Elizabeth’s daughter had a talent for understatement, Hugo thought. “It shouldn’t prove too difficult to find a husband,” he agreed. “But whether you can find one willing to support your philanthropy, lass, I don’t know. Husbands can be an unaccommodating breed, or so I’ve been told.”
    Chloe frowned. “Of course, Mama said Jasper intended me to marry Crispin. And that I certainly shouldn’t care to do.”
    So that was it! Hugo drained his glass and reached again for the bottle. Simplicity itself. Jasper’s stepson from his wife’s former marriage would thus control Chloe’s fortune. There was no bar to such a union—not a drop of consanguinity. Presumably, Elizabeth had intended him to forestall such a plan. “Why don’t you care to?”
    Her response was sharp and definite. “Crispin’s a brute … just like Jasper. He rode his hunter into the ground once and brought him home foundered and bleeding from his spurs. Oh, and he used to pull the wings off butterflies. I’m sure he hasn’t changed.”
    No, not a suitable mate for someone with a mission to succor needy members of the animal kingdom. “Why has that foul-mouthed parrot only got one leg?” he asked involuntarily.
    “I don’t know. I found him in Bolton. He’d been left in the gutter and it was raining.”
    “Beefs ready.” Samuel made the laconic declaration as he turned the spit. “Lawyer stayin’?”
    Scranton looked anxiously to his host and received a calm “If you care to.”
    “Well, I daresay it’ll be way past dinner when I get home,” he said, rubbing his hands at the succulent aromas arising from the fireplace. “So I’ll thank ye kindly.”
    “I’m starving,” Chloe declared.
    “Had enough bread and cheese for nuncheon to feed a regiment,” Samuel commented, bringing the meat to the table.
    “But that was hours ago. Shall I fetch knives and forks?” “In the dresser.”
    That hideous dress did nothing to mask the grace of her movements, Hugo thought, watching her dance around his kitchen with an assumption of familiarity that filled him with foreboding. He went down to the cellar to bring up wine.
    Chloe pushed her glass forward expectantly when he drew the cork.
    “I’ve no objection to your drinking burgundy, but this is a particularly fine wine, so don’t gulp it like orgeat,” he cautioned, filling her glass.
    Lawyer Scranton sipped and purred. Eating in the kitchen of a decaying manor house in the company of a man and his servant might be unusual, but there was no fault to be found with the fare.
    Chloe seemed to agree. She consumed a quantity of rare beef, mushrooms, and potatoes that astounded Hugo, who wondered where in that tiny frame it could all be stored. Elizabeth, as he recalled, had had the appetite of a sparrow. He shook his head in a bemused gesture that was becoming all too familiar and returned to the issue of first importance.
    “Scranton, you know both sides of Miss Gresham’s family. Are there any female relatives she could go to?”
    “Oh, you can’t send me to stay with some elderly aunt who’ll expect me to walk an overfed pug and polish the silver,” Chloe said.
    “I thought you liked animals,”
    “I do, but I prefer the ones that other people don’t like.”
    Revealing, he thought, but said only, “Do you have such an aunt?”
    “Not that I know of,” Chloe said. “But there was a girl at the seminary who had one.”
    Someone else’s aunt was not helpful. “Scranton?” Hugo appealed to the lawyer, who wiped his mouth with some deliberation and took another sip of his wine.
    “Lady Gresham had no living relatives, Sir Hugo. Hence the size of Miss Gresham’s fortune. I don’t know about Sir Stephen’s side of the family. But perhaps Sir Jasper would be of assistance there.”
    That